- Hello, and welcome to Episode 21 of The Cerebrations Podcast. In previous episodes, we've looked at leadership through the prism of experienced executives. My guests were folks who had been in senior roles, or who have been advising such executives.

- Today I'd like to shift gears a little and focus on the experiences of aspiring leaders. In other words, those who are on a fast track, but are still on a steep learning and growing trajectory. For this purpose, I've invited Marina Krivonossova.

- She's a content marketing specialist with significant background in marketing, including content, social media, and branding. After having worked in different roles with increasing responsibilities at several companies in different verticals, Marina decided to found Retold, which is her own B2B content marketing agency. Marina is a social media influencer and very passionate about bringing the power of storytelling and innovation into the world of content marketing. She's also passionate about professional growth and honing leadership and management skills.

- I hope today's episodes is insightful, not only from Marina's peers, but even for those more seasoned executives in this podcast audience. Perhaps we can all learn a little bit more about the aspirations and challenges of the next generation of marketing leaders so we can help them grow.

- Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to invite Marina Krivonossova to the virtual stage. Hi Marina, how are you doing today?

- Hello there, I'm doing pretty well. How are you today?

- I'm doing great, and I'm delighted to have you on this podcast episodes. I look forward to talking about the aspirations and challenges of becoming a marketing leader today. Before we dive deeper into this topic, I would like to point everyone's attention to the bottom of the screen. I have a call to action there to visit several patients info, which is the website for this podcast. And there, everyone who's interested can find out more about you and how to get in touch with you, but also they can find out what other topics have been covered in this podcast so far, the different guests that I've had, and they can watch those interviews at their leisure. So, I just wanted to bring this up as a starting point. And the other thing I wanted to mention is the context for the episode today is that typically, this podcast focuses on inviting seasoned executives and we help them refocus their attention on concepts and techniques that may help them become better leaders, coaches, or managers. But today, I thought it would change things a little bit and we'll focus a little bit more on, we provide a glimpse into the paths of aspiring leaders, those that are on the right trajectory and they're growing, but they're still taking specific steps to position themselves as successful marketing leaders. And I think you have some great ideas to share there. So I just wanted to provide this context. So as my first question, I would like to ask you to please share with the audience some highlights about your career path, your marketing journey so far. How did you get started and where are you now and how did you get from there to here?

- Yep, absolutely. So, my marketing journey has been a little untraditional to say the least. I got my bachelor's degree in international relations. I got my master's degree in political science. I wrote my thesis on anti-human trafficking. I had all these kind of goals to work in the government or at a local NGO or something like that. And now I'm a marketer. I'm a B2B content marketer with my own company. So, you know, kind of begs the question, what happened, right? But when I was kind of living in the Netherlands and I was thinking about what I wanna do with my life, I realized that most of my experience has actually not been in the fields where I got all of my degrees. My primary experience has been in marketing, and I realized I'd always been working in social media management. I was creating web pages, I was doing web design, I was doing copywriting, blog management, kind of trying my hand at everything to do with marketing. And I got to a point that I was like, "Okay, I've been doing this for so long I guess I could finally say out loud, you know, I'm building my career in marketing." So in the last years I've been in marketing for about seven, eight years now. I've worked for all sorts of companies. Everything from credit insurance to finance, to SaaS, to, you know, tech, to education, you name it. I've worked in every size company. I've worked with startups, scale ups, corporates. And just recently, so in November, 2023, I decided to launch my own company. So that's where I'm at now. And yeah, that's a bit about my marketing journey in summary.

- Great, well, congratulations first on starting your own agency. I think that's a very important step. It's a scary step as well. So, kudos for, you know, being strong and brave and doing that, and good luck in your future development of that business. But I think what you're sharing here, I hear it more and more these days, this non-traditional path. And I've also done similar in many ways because I studied finance and actually international business back in the day, and I thought, that'll be in iBanking. And then I went into strategy, and then I went into marketing. So, you know, I think it's just the sign of times, it's where we are and as a society and where the world is going and marketing is just following on that. But, you know, I'm glad that you joined marketing, the marketing tripe, and I hope you're enjoying it. So let's talk about challenges. Challenges to anyone who's in marketing. And I'll ask you to specifically focus on those that are unique to aspiring marketing leaders. But before we do that, let's first focus on the commonalities. So, what do you think is common across all levels of seniority and experience in terms of challenges in leadership, in marketing roles?

- I think the biggest challenge that all marketers will face, no matter what intern to director to kind of any level, is the fact that every single other department in the company will think that they understand your job better than you do. And I think that is very unique to marketing. Sales is kind of trusted to do their thing for the most part. You know, you have the engineers that are completely on their own, right? They're doing the magic stuff, but everybody thinks that they can do marketing better than the marketers. And I think it's really difficult as a marketer to deal with that. You're always trying to convince every single other department that what you're doing makes sense, that you actually know it best. And it's crazy you even have to try to convince them of that when you're the one with experience, you know? And you'll notice that at the beginning. You'll start off as a marketing intern and you'll be like, "Oh, wow, nobody trusts us, nobody trusts the marketing department." And then you become a director, you know, 10, 15 years later, and you're like, "Oh, wow, they still don't trust me." So I think that's really the biggest challenge that all marketers face.

- Yeah, I'm actually so glad that you mentioned this, because it is a challenge, even if you've been in this for so many years, and people, they could, in the previous sentence, they may say, "Oh, I am so, you know, grateful for what you're bringing to the table, and I completely trust your expertise" and blah, blah, blah. And then in the next sentence they say, "And by the way, let me tell you how we should do these things." And it's happening all the time. And I think maybe the other field, and it's kind of related to marketing, but the other field where this happens a lot is market research where everyone thinks that they can create a survey and it's just, you know, you put together a couple of questions, it's not the rocket science, right? So everyone can do that. But yeah, and I just actually posted earlier today on LinkedIn, a little meme that was on the same topic that at any point of time there's a no marketer telling a marketer what to do. And it's so true. So, I'm glad you're mentioning this. So this is the common factor, this is the common challenge. What about some more unique challenges when you're still on your growth trajectory? You're trying to establish yourself as a leader. What do you think is happening there?

- I think you'll really notice how quickly the field of marketing evolves. And that's why I'm really pleased personally with my non-traditional background. I feel like if I got a degree in marketing, I would've wasted my time. Because by the time something about marketing makes its way into a textbook, nine outta 10 times, it's not relevant. Certain things will always be relevant. You know, psychology of marketing, for instance, that'll always, you know, you're working with people. There's, you know, always people involved. So that won't change. But when it comes to relevant platforms, relevant approaches to take that is evolving so darn quickly to the point that I've taken months off, especially off of LinkedIn or you know, off of socials, and I come back and I'm like, "What is this new digital world I've returned to?" And I think that's one of the biggest challenges marketers will also encounter, realizing how quickly everything changes. I don't think you see that in, you know, every single other field out there. There's a lot of stability in certain other fields, some fields it also changes a lot. But in marketing, you really see it, you really do.

- Yeah, I agree. And I think that's the biggest pitfall for anyone who's reached the top, that in a way, if they become complacent and they just become managers without getting their hands dirty, I'm not saying, I mean, you have to learn how to delegate when you have a team. You have to let your folks that are working on your team to do what they're supposed to be doing. Don't meddle in that but you have to understand what's going on, even if you are at the top of some really large organization. If you don't get your hands dirty, if you don't know what's current, things are gonna go bad. And I think that's what you're saying here, but also when you're growing, you may think you're on the cutting edge and it's so easy to lose that edge. So, it's important to keep up with that. But I think that kind of segues nicely into my next question about the skills that are essential for marketing leaders success. So let's start with, I mean, I think you mentioned that you need to keep up to date, and that's probably something we are gonna talk a little bit more later today. But like, I've also heard from you emotional intelligence that you believe it's key. So, why don't we start with that and then we can talk about other skills.

- Absolutely. So I think this is a lesson I learned the hard way, and I'm not afraid to admit it, I'm very honest in that sense. But when I was getting my start in marketing and in the professional world in general, my emotional intelligence was really lacking. I kind of was like, "Well, this makes sense to me. So it should make sense to everyone. And this is how I receive feedback so everyone should be okay receiving feedback like that. But when you're working in marketing, you will work with so many different people. And I don't mean just in marketing, I mean also in other departments, as I said, other departments like to get involved. And you will work a lot with other departments, even if things are going great, even if they're not questioning what you're doing, you're still gonna have that back and forth. And you're gonna be working with so many different people from so many different cultures and backgrounds, that being emotionally intelligent, being able to kind of adapt your approach depending on who you're talking to and who you're working with, is just so incredibly important. You know, the hard skills, they matter, being a good writer, being a good communicator, that's all important. But emotional intelligence is huge. It's really not to be underestimated, especially if you're an aspiring leader.

- Yeah, I think emotional intelligence is becoming very important in any leadership role. But on the marketing side, as you said, extremely important. I mean, if you have people that are meddling in your business or for good or bad, I mean, sometimes, you know, it's a technical field and you need a subject matter expert to stop you before you make a big mistake when you're writing whatever content that's important. But it's very, you know, it's important to be able to manage this very well. So, I agree, very essential skill. What would you care to identify some other skills that are also important for leadership positions on the marketing side?

- I touched on it briefly just now, but communication is another really important skill. Again, no matter what you do, you'll have to communicate with people. But in marketing, I've seen so much go wrong because of miscommunication. I've seen so many arguments break out and so many failed campaigns and so much time wasted on projects that shouldn't have been wasted, just because there was misalignment and communication. And both sides think, you know, "Well, I said this, I said this," but it's not about what you said. Because communication goes beyond just words. It's really about not just speaking, but speaking to be understood. And it's not just listening, but it's really hearing what the other party says. And I think that also ties into emotional intelligence. Communication is just something that goes hand in hand with that, I would say. And I think especially in marketing, that's just a huge skill. And again, I'll be the first to admit that when I was getting mastered kinda sucked at communicating, not afraid to admit it. And again, I was always like, "Well, why did they do that?" I mean, I thought, I clearly said what I said, but I didn't think about how my words could be perceived or where the gaps could appear. So I think it's really important when you're talking to someone, you're not just talking to talk, you're talking to be understood and you're talking to communicate.

- That's great. And it ties in very well with the previous episodes that I have on this podcast.

- Oh, really?

- So I'm gonna have a little shameless plug here for past episodes. But again, for those that are interested in what Marina just said, check out, there is an episode on active listening, which I think is partially what she's saying here right now. Not just talk but listen, understand what the others want from you and where they're coming from. There is an episode on being an effective communicator, and it focuses a little bit more on the sales side in terms of how to effectively communicate when you're talking to your customers or prospects. But hey, a lot of the best practices there apply very well in the corporate setting internally when you're talking to your peers or your, you know, cross-functional leaders from other departments. And there is an episode on how to deal with HiPPOs, which are basically the high income, high profile folks that try to kind of weigh in every situation and may oftentimes try to override what you're doing. So again, I'm glad you're bringing these topics because they are eternal, they're always relevant to everyone, no matter what seniority level they have within the marketing department. So I'd like to point out that we have previously discussed those. So as we talk about skills, and you mentioned earlier also the fact that it's such a dynamic from a challenges standpoint, it's such a dynamic field, things change so quickly, especially on the digital side, that even if you take a little break, you come back and you feel like you've lost an eternity. So, continuous education, continuous learning is important. And I would like to bring this up here because I know that you mentioned that that's important for you too. So, it's important for success. Let's start first for individually, you know, how do you position yourself for continuous learning? What do you do to make sure that you're constantly keeping up to date with what's going on in the marketing world?

- So, I kind of have two approaches in that sense. There's the social media approach and the certification approach. And I'll talk about both separately. So in terms of social media, I think it's incredibly important to stay up to date with kind of what's happening in the world of the platforms that are relevant to you. So I use LinkedIn a lot because it's super relevant in the B2B space, right? So, what I do is I follow the relevant creators in my field. I really spend a lot of time researching like who truly knows what they're talking about? Not the people with a ton of followers, not blindly following people 'cause they have colorful pictures and, you know, sky high likes and comments and stuff. But really looking at the content that they create and the value they deliver. Because sometimes you'll find someone, you know, with 2, 3, 4K followers and they are sharing like the insider secrets on what's happening in the world of social media, what's changing in the world of marketing. And you're like, "Oh, how, how is your account now bigger? You are like giving away all this gold for free." And sometimes you'll find these creators who are like, I don't know, 100, 200K followers. They're sharing the most generic nonsense. And it's a really a reminder of you have to pay attention who you get your content from. But it's also a reminder that there's some amazing people to learn from online. So that's something that's huge for me. I have learned so much about marketing that I apply, you know, in my daily work that I applied in my daily work in the past as well for years now. So I think that's one way that I stand on top of continuous learning as well as certifications, which I don't think they're as relevant. I don't think I'm a better marketer if I have more certifications. But it's one of those things where if you find a platform that lets you kind of take courses and do little quizzes to learn, you'll be surprised at how much value you can get from there beyond just the paper, beyond the little certificate that says, "Congrats you passed." So I've been using HubSpot Academy, which is completely free, at least what I use. I don't know if there's a paid version, I use the free one. And sometimes they have courses that are like, you know, just digital marketing 101, social media 101. And it's really good stuff. It's a refresher for me, really, it's a refresher of, you know, what you should be paying attention to in your daily marketing work, what you should be tracking, what does and doesn't make sense from a marketing perspective. So I think there's two ways that I stay on top of learning, and that's what works best for me.

- That's great. I'm glad you mentioned HubSpot Academy because it's a great resource, I love it. I always point out anyone who joins a company where I work on the sales side specifically, because I want them to be able to use HubSpot. And a lot of them say, "Well, I've never used it before. I use Salesforce, whatever." Okay, well there's HubSpot Academy. Trust me, just spent half a day watch a couple videos, it's so intuitive. They've developed so much content and it's free. So I'm glad you mentioned that. And then the other thing you mentioned about the influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers, and then the other folks that are with fewer followers, but they have more substance to share. I think it's very relevant because a lot of times those that are at the mainstream, they just manage to get there somehow. And they probably don't have the time to sit back and think what happens. They're just going with it mainstream. But as they are representing the mainstream, there are undercurrent trends that are happening that are not even seeing, and they may miss in the next round. But there are other folks on the side that are analyzing all this and sharing all these ideas. So, very good point about that too. So, all right, you know, I asked you to talk about how you position yourself for continuous learning. What about your team? Like if you have a team of people that work with you, how do you foster culture of continuous learning?

- So again, there's kind of a two-pronged approach here. There is the very direct one of kind of encouraging people to also use work time, whether it be, you know, every week for a few hours, biweekly, monthly, however you wanna approach it, you know, for your unique team. And encourage people to take that work time not, you know, weekends, not their evenings, but work time to invest into that learning to really spend some time completing those HubSpot courses, if that's how they best learn to really spend that time on social media. Not just blindly scrolling, but really looking up those kind of leaders in their industry who they wanna learn from, who they wanna follow, keeping up with their content, experimenting with new approaches. That's one way that I think is really valuable of approaching it. And the other one is kind of during marketing meetings, again, however often you have them asking people what new thing they've learned about in marketing that they think is exciting. I think it's so much better than, you know, forcing your team to be like, "All right, every week you're gonna tell me something you've learned recently." I think that's horrible, I've had that before. And it just puts so much unnecessary pressure on people. But I like it when you take kind of a more casual approach to it and just be like, "What have you learned that's exciting?" 'Cause if I know anything about marketers is that they're so passionate about what they do. They're creative, they're interesting, and they're passionate about their work. So the ones I talk to always have something cool to share that they've learned recently. There's always something that they're like, "Oh, I saw this campaign." Whether it was good or bad, you know, with a flop that's still exciting to share. Or, "Hey, there's this new social media platform that's taken off, you know, maybe we wanna experiment with it. Maybe we wanna try something with it." So I think it's just great to kind of encourage that open and casual conversation about what's happening in the world of marketing.

- Yeah, yeah, I've done this in the past, and I agree that if it's too forced, it may backfire. But what I've found to work, for me at least, is that I'll start by sharing what I've learned. And by putting myself out there, first of all, I gave an example so it's easier for them to kind of understand that I'm not asking about some super creative insight or, you know, things that I've never heard before that, but I'm just like sharing what I see around me, and I want for all of us to comment on it. So that's, you know, allows them to think about their own examples or just to comment on my example. And that's useful as well. So, great thanks for sharing that, I completely agree with you on that. So obviously, it's important to aspire to be a leader, but at one point you have to start also start understanding or gauging how well you're doing, how effective you are with your leadership. And I wanted to move in that as our final topic, measuring your leadership's effectiveness. But I want to also position this from the perspective of where we are right now in the current B2B marketing world, especially on the SaaS side. We've gone through some sales make shifts over the past few years, and, you know, we've experienced a lot of headwinds and even the most successful leaders have fallen victim to external factors that have prevented their companies or their teams, or even their roles from expanding as much as they wanted to. So, I think for the why I'm saying this is that for all of us, sometimes it's hard in the current environment to decouple what we've done from what has happened at the end, right?

- Yeah.

- So it's hard to basically say, "okay, I was effective as a leader," or this person was effective as a leader because we see that everyone is struggling. So what do you think? Can you provide some effective measurements of how you can measure what you've achieved as a leader, decoupling from the externalities, whether those were positive or negative, but basically just focusing on your own personal experiences.

- So one thing I would actually focus on is when you're gathering feedback from your team, are you getting any negative constructive feedback? Because if all the feedback you receive is positive, I think that's a red flag. Ultimately, nobody is perfect, everyone makes mistakes, everybody has room for improvement. But if your team is only comfortable sharing positive things with you, I think that's a huge red flag for you as a leader. So I think that automatically says, "Okay, maybe I'm not, you know, creating an environment where people feel comfortable sharing honestly with me, where they either kind of worry that I'll say something negative in return, or, you know, it'll create a hostile environment in the team." I think if you're an effective leader, your team will tell you the truth. And if you're not doing great, whether it, you know, be that you took a wrong approach to a campaign or I don't know, you lashed out on someone during a meeting because you didn't sleep well or something, it could be anything, right? But they'll call you out on that. And I think that's a huge indicator of your effectiveness as a leader.

- Great, so I would like to wrap up with the question that I always ask at the end. And my goal for each of these podcast episodes is to be insightful and educational. So, part of being educational is how much people will retain over time. And I would like to create a few nuggets of wisdom at the end. So, if you think about the folks that are watching this or listening to this podcast episode and six months later for some reason they start thinking about or talking about marketing leadership, what are the two or three nuggets of advice that you'd like them to retain, that you'd like them to remember as they think about this podcast episodes?

- I think one thing that they should always think about is that they shouldn't be afraid of questioning if they're happy with where they are in their career. I think that so many people are just afraid of even thinking in that direction 'cause they're like, "Oh gosh, what if I realize I'm not happy? What if I realize I'm not where I wanna be? I don't even, I don't even wanna think about it. You know, I'm just gonna keep grinding away every single day." I think that's one of the worst things you can do for yourself. I think it's so important to regularly question if you're content, if you're satisfied, if you're happy with path and the trajectory you've picked for yourself. I know for me, I wasn't, and I was the one who was kinda scared to question it 'cause I was like, "Ugh, but I spent all this time, all this effort, you know, working to become the head of marketing at a company and I'm not happy." And why is that? But questioning it is what pushed me to start my own company. And I'm so happy about that. And even if in a year I say, "You know what? Entrepreneurship isn't for me." This experience has brought me so many lessons already that I will take with me, you know, until I die and to everything I do. So I think it's important to kind of question whether you're happy or not with where you are. And push for improvement to get yourself going in the direction where you actually wanna be so that you get to the point that you're satisfied and you're happy and you can genuinely say that and mean it. So I think that's the first one. And the second one would be to live life on your own terms. I always say this to everyone I know, 'cause I think it's so important. We might be tempted to do things or not do things because of our family and what they think and what our friends think and what strangers on the internet think. You know, everyone has an opinion, right? But ultimately, when it's about your life, it's your opinion that matters. It doesn't matter that your grandpa thinks marketing is a scam. And it doesn't matter that your dad says, you know, "There's no money in marketing." None of it matters. If marketing is what you want, your life has to be lived on your terms because you're the only one who's gonna have to live with its consequences.

- Great, live life on your own terms that's a great slogan to wrap this podcast episode with. Thank you very much, Marina. It's been a pleasure speaking with you today and I really enjoyed the conversation. I hope that everyone else who will dial into this podcast will enjoy it too. And I look forward to maybe hosting you for other podcast episodes. I appreciate your time today.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, bye-bye.

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